Vivitek D795WT - Features and video performance

Summary

Our Score

8/10

Review Price £1,140.00

The D795WT’s apparent home as well as office ambitions continue with its connections, which include an HD video-capable HDMI, two VGA PC inputs, a VGA output, an RS-232 port for external control, an RJ-45 port for network connection, composite and S-Video inputs, and a USB port for the direct connection of computers.

The first sign of trouble with the D795WT comes as you try to set it up. Getting the picture to simply appear is easy enough, but getting it to appear with all of its edges straight and at the right size for our test room screen is a totally different matter. We played around with the projector’s position, keystone correction tools and digital zoom settings for a good half hour before we got something we were really happy with. And even then there was a slight downward slope to the picture’s upper left corner.A degree of distortion is probably inevitable given how ‘hard’ the mirror is having to work to spread the image so far, but that doesn’t alter the fact that it’s slightly distracting not to have pictures looking perfectly rectangular.

While it might take effort to get the D795WT working, though, the results don’t diminish in the slightest from its image size achievements. In fact, having set the projector to its widescreen mode, we had to actually push the projector so close to our (heavily bordered) 85in projection screen that it was touching its frame and use the digital image reduction tool before we could see all of the D795WT’s picture. Amazing.

In reading the D795WT’s specs, we’d been a bit alarmed to note that its claimed 3000 Lumens of brightness was actually a higher figure than its claimed 2500:1 contrast ratio. This type of brightness/contrast balance usually points to a projector that’s focussed almost exclusively on delivering business presentations in bright boardroom environments, and which won’t look at all convincing with video or gaming applications. Thankfully, though, the D795WT proves an exception to the rule, with its various presets adjusting pictures so effectively and extensively that its multi-purpose credentials remain intact.If you actually do just want to use it for a presentation, then the Presentation mode powers up the brightness dramatically and pushes colours out with the sort of tone and intensity that suits PC use. But crucially, if you opt for the Movie preset, the image does a total U-turn, pushing contrast ahead of brightness to deliver a surprisingly convincing black level response and, most unexpected of all, a colour palette that actually looks video-like. There’s a touch more blue in the image than we’d ideally like, but we wouldn’t consider this in any way a deal breaker on a projector with a focus on practicality like the D795WT.

Also surprising is how sharp and detailed the D795WT’s video pictures look with HD sources. For despite the potential for distortions caused by the aspherical mirror, the picture looks emphatically HD for the most part - at least on a par with budget ‘normal’ projectors.